Rotten Day
by WTFWonder
Summary: Most days he’s a goofy, hyper nut. Most days, he’s just looking for laughs. The rotten days however…


Rotten Day

By Someone with Time On Their Hands

Summary: Most days he's a goofy, hyper nut. Most days, he's just looking for laughs. The rotten days however… Minor crossover of TB x JL (OH GOD THERE WERE SO MANY TYPOS.)

When he opened his eyes he was greeted with the same multicolor brightness of his lair. Clown baubles here, various primary-colored weapons there, with just a smattering of cast off costumes strewn about the warehouse's floor. His freakshow mind had yet to turn all its lights on and he was merely scrabbling to remember last night. There had been another heist, this time to pilfer a set of porcelain harlequin dolls. He had thought they were a bit too frilly for his taste, but Harley had gone off her rocker when she heard about them. The girl had squealed like a helium ducky when she saw the pictures on the news, gushing and pleading, _"Oh, Mistah J! Mistah J, can we please? Please, please, please!?"_

She had flailed and backflipped and stamped her feet and flung herself on him, arms and legs wrapped around him in a vice. He would have said yes anyway out of sheer restlessness, but the way she had clung to him… Her red breasts pushing against his chest, her arms locked around his neck and her vertex pressed tautly against the place just above his pelvis. The itch struck him, and struck him hard. So he had giddily agreed and the whole Joker clan went out to play: him, Harley Quinn, Punch, Judy, and the hyenas. Off to the museum to graffiti and gas and rob the place, which they did without a hitch. Until the Bat brigade showed up. There was the traditional scuffle and banter throwing until he, Harley and the kids escaped with the dolls, leaving Punch and Judy to take the fall.

They did so quietly and obediently as they always did. The Joker saw this on the GTV news, while Harley played with her dolls, tiny bells tinkling and porcelain clinking softly in the background. The itch was still there. He became aware of his moll's own antsiness when he overheard some of the more interesting stories her dolls were playing out. _"Oh, Mistah Mini J, I'm sooo tired."_, the little harlequin with the pink and black diamond attire sighed. In a deeper tone she voiced the violet and lavender clown doll's thoughts, _"Really, Mini Quinn? Do you want me to tuck you in? Maybe have a bit of…pie before we turn in?"_ She had opened her mouth for Mini Quinn to answer, but he snatched the female doll from her hand.

In a high falsetto he answered, _"Oh, yes, Mini Mr. J! And by all means have seconds!"_ Then he had looked up deviously through his green dreads, red eyes beaming. Harley had mirrored his look, dark lips turned up in a cheeky smile. An instant later the mad moll was swept up into the clown prince of crime's long arms, the owner of the latter running at top speed to the makeshift bedroom. He had dropped her like a sack of giggling potatoes and hopped on top of her. They raced each other to have their clothes off first, Harley stopping at her cap and makeup. Ever since their first date, the greasepaint, domino mask and fabric pigtails had become her true face. Plus Joker liked it better that way.

The night had gone on happily, violently and blissfully.

The way they always did before a Rotten Day.

The evening completely recollected, the Joker popped his neck and turned to his side. There was Miss Quinn, snoozing dreamily with the sheets just covering her naughty bits. Her cap was crooked and her makeup had half rubbed off on her pillow, a trail of drool snaking from the corner of her mouth. "Aaaw." The Rotten Day feeling twisted and prickled, throwing acidic ideas through his head.

Push her off the bed.

Smash her new dolls.

Drop her into one of the chemical vats.

D, all of the above.

Yes.

No.

Yeah!

Nuh-uh.

Joker shook his head and hauled himself out of the bed. He snapped and popped his limbs and spine, admonishing the Rotten Day feeling for aiming so readily on his little imp. Certainly he would give her a bubble bath in his perma-clown vat one of these days. Most likely on their anniversary after another splendid date. But not today, no. This Rotten Day belonged to someone else. The way they'd belonged to Officer Bennett, Officer Yin, Prank and countless others he couldn't be bothered to put names to.

Harley's Rotten Day would come, just later.

Later.

He gave a roaring yawn and Bud and Lou's ears perked up from the corner of the room they'd occupied after he and the lady finished their midnight playtime. "Shush, kids, don't go waking Mom until I say so." The behemoth of a clown proceeded to tug on and jump into his clothes wondering all the while who his Rotten Day would be for. Another member of the GCPD? Some rich fellow on the top of the world? Perhaps a random lady off the street to break up the sausage fest monotony? He'd just have to wait and see.

Now dressed and ready to go he tiptoed dramatically over to the door. "Okay kids," the hyenas got to their feet excitedly, tails wagging, "go get her! Go get her!" He closed the door swiftly on the sound of cackling barks and a rudely awakened lady jester. As bedlam went loose in the bedroom he slunk away, out of the lair and into the garage. His hotrod waited expectantly. He got in with a ribbon of snickering following after him as he sped through the streets, looking this way and that for the proper nominee.

The streets were depressingly empty, as were the sidewalks. He heard scarcely a shriek or chortle thrown at him. His grinning maw drooped into a grumping frown. If he didn't have a decent victim for this Rotten Day, well, it would just get bottled up and bottled up until Harley would just have to be--.

"Hello!" The Gotham City Gala Hall loomed in the distance, glowing with lights and various rich socialites and stars. "Well, beggars can't be choosers I suppose." The wealthy, hoity-toity types weren't nearly as fertile for going loony tunes as the common man, woman or child. The Rotten Day feeling promptly whacked him upside the head with a mental two by four. The malevolent metallic non-voice whispered in his head, stronger and louder than all the usual tenants in his skull. It whispered promises of sudden, sporadic sadism. If he didn't get the Rotten Day itch scratched as of yesterday it would dig out the real bogeyman lurking in the deepest darkest crevice of his brain.

A horrid creature that was him and wasn't him; a thing wearing his colors over a different, sinister face. If that monster didn't get any showtime outside of the appointed Rotten Days, well, bad things would happen. Things completely outside of his sunny, kooky reign and that worried the Joker on a grand level. If the Rotten Thing didn't get its day, it would _take_ a week. Or a month. Or a year. Or however long it took until it was satisfied to let his cheery self back in the driver's seat. The Rotten Thing would do things to people, to the entire city, that would shatter the audience's view of him as simply an off kilter clown. They were a little spooked by him, and that was fine. The police and the Batman knew he was nuttier than squirrel poop, and that was fine. But the Rotten Thing's antics, if let loose completely, would destroy it all.

Images of shattering little girls' spines, slicing bloody smiles into victims, injecting all manner of horrible things into people's blood and stomachs flashed in his mind's eye.

He shook his head wildly and blinked them all away. But the Rotten Thing, sat impatiently in his head, wanting its Rotten Day. "Alrighty then, let's get this show on the road!", he shrilled with sour happiness. He revved the hotrod and leaped up onto a Lamborghini's hood, parking on the roof. Practiced legs sprung him out of the bizarre vehicle, bounding him off expensive car hoods all the way to the building. In his purple coat was a myriad of lunatic weapons from smiley face grenades to his retractable laser pogo stick. "But this calls for a more personal approach." He eyeballed the exterior walls, noting the plethora of ornamental ledges, decorations and/or footholds they provided.

"You'd think the city planners would _learn_ by now. But," he crooned as he took his first leap onto the side of the building, fingers and toes finding instant grips, "one man's stupid architecture is another clown's ladder! _Ha-ha-ha-ha_!" That said he began to spider his way up to the giant open windows. Proper, phony laughter lilted out of the open portal along with the ghost scent of champagne and chandelier light. On a normal day—stretch the definition as you will—he would be happy to Joker gas the lot of them and paintball the entire building. But no, no, no, today was a Rotten Day: all attention was to be for one person and one alone. Finally he made it to the bottom ledge of the gargantuan window, bony white hands scrabbling to hold onto it.

Up went his bulging red eyes, the yellow pinprick pupils scanning the sea of plastic smiling faces. There were the pretty starlets who slept their way into whatever higher class party it was, the tubby, rich old men who'd brought them and a few glamorous socialites who were invited on principle of being glamorous socialites. Closest to him was a crowd of glitzed up business folks, talking shop and gossip. They were planted next to one of dozens of little roundtables with silky tablecloths draping down like dresses. A candelabra sat in its middle, guarded by a bottle of vintage he-didn't-care-what and a few flute glasses of he-didn't-care-what around it.

The glitzy folks were smiling their drab practiced smiles at each other, gabbing on and on about how their businesses were going and who they thought was sleeping with who. "Oh, thrill and a half.", Joker droned. At this rate he'd just have to snatch up whoever got closest to the window. "Harrumph." He was just pondering grabbing Bruce Wayne himself or one of his pretty pieces of arm candy when he saw the perfect candidate. Said candidate was just barely visible due to the lifted skirt of the tablecloth falling from a fancy chair's seat. Through the wedge of visibility he could see the little creature huddled under the table, a bear in their tiny arms. He might have overlooked her altogether if not for the eyes.

Her eyes were huge, pie plate-sized things in her sockets, staring out of her fabric window at the legs of what he suspected were her dreary parents. On cue mommy dearest noticed the little Mary Jane-wearing feet poking out from under the table. An evil step mother look crossed the woman's dour face and she daintily knelt down so that her dress wouldn't touch the floor. "Lacey Walch, you get out from under there this instant!"

"But I don't want to…", the girl's nearly nonexistent voice protested.

"_Now_ missy.", enforced dear old dad. Lacey inched her way out from under the cloth, her entire diminutive self revealed. She looked to be just budding out of her toddler years, her dark hair cropped short around her baby-faced jaw. Her "glitzy" attire consisted of a simple black and white dress that reached all the way to her toes. In her arms was the rather ragged bear and her eyes focused on its matted fur. Her big, face-eating, black eyes. In his head the Joker had already called dibs on her descent into crazy land. The kid in him cringed and growled as Mrs. Walch snatched the bear away from the girl, sharp fake tips digging into the stuffing.

"I warned you about this, Lacey. You only get Mr. Ted when you behave and I told you not to go hiding like that." She turned her tall, skinny back on the girl, the bear tucked under her bird wing of an arm.

Mr. Walch gave his daughter one last glance before ending with, "You'll get Mr. Ted back when you behave like a good girl."

"Note to self: find Walch residence and dump stinkbugs in Mr. and Mrs. Walch's underwear drawers.", he groused to himself, ruby lips turned up in a yellow-toothed snarl. His ears pricked at the murmured explanation from Mama Walch that Lacey was only there because they didn't dare trust a babysitter in this town and yadda yadda yadda. He focused back on the girl who was now groping at the air gingerly, wanting a teddy bear to spontaneously appear in her fingers. Joker cocked a non-brow at a champagne flute on the table near Lacey's head. It trembled on its own. Trembled all the way to the edge of the table and then—_crash_!

Pricy frou-frou alcohol went splashing everywhere, over the girl's Mary Jane's and mommy's heels. "Lacey!", Mrs. Walch screeched in minor scandal. "Do you want to go home right now!?"

"Ye--."

"You go sit down and don't get into anymore trouble or you're grounded for the week." The herd of tittering rich folks edged away from the broken glass as a waiter came by and cleaned the mess up. Lacey blinked rapidly, eyes going glassy. Now was as good a time as any to lure her to the window. He puckered his lips to whistle but smothered it just in time. A whistle could attract anyone. He just wanted the kid. As he pulled himself closer to the wall he felt an unfamiliar shape press against his chest. Joker risked releasing the ledge with one hand and groped in his breast pocket for the thing. In the thrown light he saw that it was the last harlequin doll; one he'd forgotten they even swiped.

It was the smallest one they'd stolen and the only porcelain piece was its face. Otherwise it was pure fluff and fabric, bending like a noodle this way and that. The outfit was sheer monochrome, the diamond design replaced by black spades and white hearts all over its costume with a half-and-half harlequin cap. Cute, but too bland for Harley and him. He smirked at the bearless, doll-less girl. "Not like I'll miss it." Ducking his head under the window he plopped the doll on its fabric fanny, jiggling it in place. The little cap bells jingled and jostled for about ten seconds before he saw her little head floating closer. Closer, he could see her face. Closer, he could see her dress. Closer, he could see her tiny hand reaching out for the doll--. "Yoinks!" The Joker pulled the doll over the ledge with him, little Lacey gasping.

Lacey trotted over and looked down. They locked eyes: bug-eyed red with bug-eyed black. She gasped. He twiddled his fingers at her around the doll. "Hiya, kiddo! Do you want this?" He shook the doll temptingly at her, its head mere inches from her reaching fingers. She almost got it until she felt herself falling over the ledge. Lacey jerked herself back, but kept her eyes jumping from Joker to the doll. Joker pulled a moping face and crooned up at her, "Aww, don't you want the little guy? He's not having much fun with a big lug like me. C'mon…" The girl drummed her fingers anxiously on the window ledge.

"Y…Yes."

"Lean a bit closer, Lacey dear, my hearing's going." She leaned the smallest bit closer.

"Yes. Yes, I want him, but you… You're…"

"A bad guy? A crook? A big, city-terrorizing jerk?", he offered. Lacey shook her head uncaringly.

"…too far away." Joker chuckled as quietly as he could and twirled the doll in his hand.

"Well, maybe _you_ are. Care to blow this big, boring grown up party and have some _real_ fun? Tell you what, have him as a freebie." He tossed the doll up and he could have sworn he saw the thing float into her hands. Her mouth twitched once, twice and then a smile strained into life. Smiles were obviously as rare as a white tiger for little Miss Walch. Hands now full of brand new toy, Joker saw his best opening short of just grabbing her by the scruff of her collar and hauling her away. He held out his giant alabaster hand. "So, what do you say, kid?" Her big, staring eyes paused on his face for a long second. Back to his hand. Smoothly and slowly she planted her hand in his palm.

His fingers swallowed her hand like a tarp around a napkin. In a swift yank he pulled her out the window and into the crook of his arm as easy as he would a pillow. From the corner of his eye the jester saw Lacey's face was placid but she had a death grip on the doll. "Hold on tight, keed." She nodded mutely before he jumped as hard and as far as he could, landing with a hard thud on a car roof and leaving foot-shaped dents. The Joker cackled as he and his willing captive leapt back to the hotrod. He settled in easily and was happy to discover that Lacey was small enough to curl in a ball and sit unobtrusively in his lap. "Comfy?"

"…Mmhmm." Oh, wasn't she a million laughs? The Rotten Thing was tempted to just gas her now and be over with it. But she deserved some classic fun before getting Rotten fun.

"Good! _Wheeeeheeehahaa!_" The hotrod zoomed off the Lamborghini and into the parking lot, burning rubber and spewing blue fire. And so they sped off on a kiddified version of his first date with Dr. Harleen Quinzel. The first stop had been a candy shop where after much reassurance that it was all on him, Lacey quickly and quietly took handfuls of hard candy and suckers while Joker gobbled taffy and chocolate. From then on he had to poke and probe at the girl for any suggestion of where she wanted to go. Toy stores and bookstores were overlooked for a simple playground in a rusted park no one went to, save for the poor kids.

As Lacey climbed into a swing she explained, "We lived here once. …When Mommy and Daddy were poor. They were too s-stressed out…to yell." She swung herself and the doll—now dubbed Mr. Mime due to his coloring—and the Joker perched himself on the one next to her. The chains squealed in pain but he swung anyway, pretending he was hearing true screams.

"Well, aren't you a soap opera script waiting to happen? But let's talk about something different hmm? Let's talk about jam versus jelly. Let's talk about the merits of egging houses and putting thumbtacks on teachers' chairs. Let's talk about—sorry, what was that?"

"I said…I said you talk about kid things. …Not even the other kids talk like kids. Just about their new toys." So saying she petted Mr. Mime. If Joker had to guess, he'd say Mr. Ted had been her favorite toy since her poverty days, with mommy and daddy trying to substitute toys for attention.

"Well, grown up things bore me. Speaking of which, I have a decidedly un-grown-up thing to ask you: how'd you break the glass?" Lacey shook her head. "Yes you did it somehow. Same with catching Mimey over there. How'd ya' do it? I'm _dying_ of jealousy." Joker cocked a brow as she threw him a horrified look.

"Don't die!" Suddenly the fronts of his shirt and jacket tugged themselves forward. The pair blinked in shock. Lacey ducked her head and Joker swept a hand over his front.

"Wasn't planning to, just a figure of speech. I see you did it again, Ace."

"I'm Lacey."

"You're Ace when you're with me. Ace. That's quite a neat trick you have up your sleeve by the way. Could cause a heck of a lot of ghost hoaxes. Or other things." The Rotten Thing did a little dance in his skull, urging a certain plan to the forefront of his mind. An antique plan certainly, but one that was guaranteed to work. "But hey, since you so graciously shared with me, it's only fair I share something with _you_. Right?" Lacey-Ace shrugged and darted her eyes away, face flushing.

Awww.

"Right! Howsabout you and I go to one more stop on our little road trip, 'kay?" He heard her mumble a yes and something along the lines of "don't have to be home so soon" but he ignored this. Several miles and an extensive, littered road away from Gotham City was the ACE Chemical Plant. The Joker's nursery, hospital and home. He and the Rotten Thing grinned at the memory of chemically burned skin, throat and eyes. The snapping, growing skeleton, his face changing structure, body hair singing off and head hair exploding into a lion's mane. Then the sudden bursts of muscle from nowhere. Biceps, calves, abs, pecs and everything else exploding with strength and size like a kernel becoming a piece of popcorn.

And then—oh, then had come his brain.

Knowledge had come first. Sudden, inexplicable technical data and understanding that ranked at and above Stephen Hawking level had erupted like a conflagration. But mostly, _mostly_, it was epiphany. The Joker would later compare it to a child working on a confounding math problem of 2 plus 2, then realizing it made 4. That was what happened on a gigantic scale in his brain—immense, irreversible, impossible _understanding_. But as the intelligence came, memory went. Or more, it had been broken like a ceramic tile, and those shards were shattered, and those pieces became dust, and those dust particles became mist. Ever since, those teensy bits of memory mist had been squished and pushed together a million times to try and come up with a solid origin of who he had been. And every time he mentally re-smashed the product, knowing it wasn't true. All he could recall of his time pre-clown, was wanting people to laugh and what he'd looked like before his makeover.

To make up for this, two final ingredients had made their way in. Lunacy being one. Giggly, goofy, guffawing craziness and his jubilation in it.

The second was the Rotten Thing. The evil, slimy, angry-happy Thing that he was sure had been there all along.

Anyway.

"Ta-_daa_! The ACE Chemical Plant, beautiful birthplace of moi.", he flourished to himself with a bow. "Y'see? This place is named just for you, Acey! Let's take a looksee inside, shall we?" Lacey-Ace agreed silently and didn't resist when he pulled her inside the dilapidated building by her empty hand.

As her gaping eyes took in the foul, dripping, sharp and otherwise icky scenery of the building, she had to ask, "…Why are we here, Mr. Joker?" Red eyes turned down to beam at her, watching as she hugged Mr. Mime closer.

"To help you, ya' silly nut! Why else?"

"It smells like…like sick things here. Like a really bad hosp'tal."

"Heh-heh. Yes, it always did have a lovely aroma. But, smelly or not, there's something very important here, Ace. Or rather, up there." One pasty finger pointed up to the brim of a giant steel vat. Lacey-Ace's nose wrinkled and she sneezed.

"I think that's where the smelly stuff is." The Joker smiled and prepared to answer when a sudden spark of pain twinkled in his head. The Rotten Thing was getting very, _very_ impatient. Impatient in a way that warned that if he didn't get on with it soon, little Miss Lacey Ace Walch wouldn't get off as lucky as he was letting her. Impatient in a way that said the Rotten Thing would just drown her instead. Maybe carve a big bloody smile on her straight little face. Maybe screw his kooky clown image from here to Timbuktu and show the world just how horribly monstrous and sadistic he could be. In short: _get on with it_.

Joker managed a quick giggle before scooping her up and speed-climbing the rusty latter to the stinking vat's rim. Sure enough, there was the alien green glow of what he lovingly dubbed the Clown Chemical. Although others had taken to calling it the Monster Mix, the producers of the concoction swiftly putting a ban on it for what it did to those exposed to it. Him being Exhibit A, of course. The Joker cleared his throat and gingerly sat the girl on the rim, her Mary Jane's half a foot away from the glowing toxin. "Well, most veggies stink too, but those are good for you. So's this gunk." The Joker waved a hand grandly over the ocean of semi-poison, red eyes glinting.

Lacey-Ace leaned her thin back harder into his callused hands, her thin line of a mouth quirking uncomfortably. "But it doesn't look edbull. Eatable. I mean…"

"Edible? Sure it is! I took a bath in it and guzzled I don't remember how many gallons and look how I turned out!" Lacey-Ace turned a different facial expression—gasp!—on him, one of incredulity.

"…But I don't want to be a clown. I want…I want to be…" Her eyes clouded over and once again she left him the perfect opening. The Joker bowed his head confidentially to the small shell of her ear, Lacey-Ace eyeing him wonderingly.

"You want to be stronger.", his baritone supplied. She nodded dreamily and he mimicked it. Stray locks of green hair fell around his face, framing him like prison bars and making his vermillion eyes stand out in dark sockets. "You want to have control. For mommy and daddy to not be so…like themselves around you. Right, Ace?"

"Right." Lacey-Ace said this with utter confidence, her mouth drawn open in wistful readiness. "How can it make me stronger?" Lacey-Ace went rigid but didn't fight as he positioned her further over the vat, dipping her face towards the green goo.

"Drink." No silly additional phrases or flourishes necessary. Just the simple command: drink. First she stuck out her tongue and licked it. She shuddered and he and the Rotten Thing were sure they'd have to hold her head under. Instead they were rewarded with the phantom sound of itty bitty lips slurping up something that had the consistency of a slurpee.

_Sloorp._

_Sloorp._

_Sloorp._

_Sloooorrrp_.

"All done?"

"…"

"Ace?" Still no answer. The Rotten Thing began to grin its scarred, red grin while the rest of him recoiled inside. This wasn't supposed to happen when he was in control. It wasn't supposed to! Everything was supposed to be light and funny and maybe hilariously violent, but not—not this. No, no, no, no, no--!

_HA HA HA_, laughed the Rotten Thing. In his mind he could see it leaning its greasy, rancid head into the multicolor light of his brain. Its green hair was grassy and snarled and framed its painted face, the smile there constantly bleeding.

_HA HA HA,_ laughed the Rotten Thing as the Joker pulled the unmoving little body into his arms, her face turning to reveal stained-black lips. The Rotten Thing showed more of itself in mockery, flashing the flowing, black-violet of its coat, the ends curling and smoking into unfunny ebony.

_HA HA HA_, laughed the Rotten Thing as Ace stretched in his arms—wait. The Rotten Thing grumbled to itself as the dozens of hundreds of other Jokers laughed it away. Ace stretched in his hold as if from a nap and she even yawned, not once releasing Mr. Mime.

"Hooh!", the Joker sighed with a decent glaze of ah-I-was-never-worried chuckle, "I thought you'd gone and conked out on me, keed. How d'you feel?" The newly blackened lips parted in a sigh, the chemicals thick on her breath like liquor on a lush's. Then her eyes opened and he knew the gunk had done its job. That nifty trick of hers, the baby-sized telekinesis, was neat all on its own. But amplified by the Clown Chemical, Monster Mix, Evil Elixir or what-have-you, it would be like having an A-bomb in a little girl's brain. And that, in his book, was downright hilarious.

Back to her eyes, the black irises were gone, as were the whites. In their place was a beautiful throbbing, shifting orange-yellow blaze. They pulsed in hypnotic circles, shifting and growing and moving and swirling and-and-and-and-and-a-a-a-a-a-aaaaaaaandddd---!!!

_Aroundaroundthemulberrybushthemonkeychasedtheweaselthemonkeysaidtwasallinfun._

_POP!_

_MouthofmadnessgashofmadnesspitofmadnesstorrentofmadnesswhirlwindofmadmadMAD_

_Herealicewer'reallmadheremadasahatterwescatterandshatterandsmatterand--._

The Joker snapped his eyes shut and shook his head for what seemed like the billionth this evening. When he peeked them open again Ace's eyes were back to their relative normalcy, now with added insomnia shadows under her eyes. Neat. The girl's black mouth quirked up a bit. A little more. A lot more. Until she grinned, pearly child teeth bared. A voice, a voice very much like Ace's if it echoed, sounded in his head: '_I feel great_!' On "great" the pair lifted into the air like balloons, the clown pinwheeling his arms for balance. Still speaking directly into his mind she squealed, '_I have real power now, Mr. Joker! I have real power and—and—I know how to do things now! Amazing things like--!_' She reached out her hand and aimed it at the vat. A small piece of the rusted metal jiggled like pudding until it tore itself out and flew to her outstretched palm. In her tiny pink hand in transformed and folded and flattened into a shining silver hair clip in the shape of a clover. She pinned this in her hair as if she were putting on a dress-up queen's crown.

Ace floated closer to the Joker, her smile wide enough to split her face as she prattled. '_And this! Look at this_!' "This" was her fanning out her arms and an immense LSD-esque environment where the chemical plant used to be. It was like having the Joker's brain on the outside. With a snap of her fingers it disappeared. '_You were right Mr. Joker._', she sighed mentally as she hugged him as best she could around his shoulders, '_I can do whatever I want now, no matter what mommy and daddy say. No matter what anyone says! All thanks to you, Mr. Joker. You were so, so right._' Had he been a sane man, the Joker would be feeling utterly schmoopy right now, warm fuzzies and all. Seeing as that wasn't the case:

"Of course I was, ya' nutty girl!", he brayed with a bear hug back. "Now do a clown a favor and set us down." Ace did so silently, not letting the man go. "So you've got your economy-sized brain power with an extra hallucination flavor. Good on ya' Acey, but why talk in my head?" Ace shrugged and looked up at him uncaringly.

'_I've never talked much anyway. But now I _can't_ talk. I'm moot. Myewt. Er…_'

"Mute. Well crud, that didn't happen to me. A thousand pardons and all that, but at least you've got the spiffy lip job to make up for it." Ace quirked a brow before imagining a mirror in front of her and puckering. She nodded approvingly and waved the mind mirror away. Talk about a little power pack. He'd had to wait an entire excruciating week until he got the hang of himself and here she'd caught the whole deal in seconds. So now there was a mentally unstable little cutie in the world, as she said, all thanks to him. The Rotten Thing rolled its eyes in its dark corner, sated for its Rotten Day quota. For now. The odd couple walked out into the starry night, the Joker deciding he might as well throw in the join Team Joker line while he was at it. He opened his mouth to ask but was cut off by a hand over his crimson mouth.

Ace had levitated up to do so, still holding Mr. Mime, still smiling silently. '_Not yet, Mr. Joker. I probably will one day. But not right now. I have my own things to do first._' Her eyes flashed that insane orange-yellow again and he felt a proud tingle roll down his spine. She brought her hand away and the Joker giggled with resignation.

"Can't win 'em all I suppose. But I'm holding you to that future playdate. Comprehende?" Ace nodded yes and began to drift up and away towards the moon, her hairclip giving off a soft flare. As she shrunk to a mere dot in the sky he heard one last message.

'_The Rotten Thing's bluffing, you know. It's just a bully throwing a tantrum because he's stuck in timeout. With all the other yous in there he's outnumbered a million to one._' Then she was gone. Somewhere inside he could hear the Rotten Thing gnashing its piranha teeth in indignation and for the first time in a long time, he brushed it off. Speeding back to the lair, he checked off what he hoped, and somehow knew, was his last Rotten Day.


End file.
